


Fade To Bright

by raendown



Series: MadaTobiWeek2018 [4]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gods, M/M, Tobi keep your sass in check, remember who you are speaking too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-20 02:02:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15523632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raendown/pseuds/raendown
Summary: He's known this was coming since he was a boy just old enough to understand what the word 'sacrifice' meant.





	Fade To Bright

Warm, muggy air sitting still with no breeze to shift it, crickets so loud he thought he might go deaf with the sound of them, and the sun shining down directly in to his sensitive eyes with nothing to cast even the slightest bit of shadow. Despite the fear he couldn’t deny was coursing through his blood, so far being offered as a sacrifice to the local god was nothing but boring and uncomfortable.

There wasn’t even a sense of betrayal to keep him angry and distract him from what was to come. No urge towards vengeance lay in his heart, not when he had known this was coming for a very long time. Really it was a marvel he had lived to the age he had, a miracle that up until now they had always had some sort of criminal or savage enemy in the jail house to use as an unwilling sacrifice so that his people might appease their god and be allowed to live in peace for another year. Tobirama had known since he was a child that when the day came there was no other to sacrifice he would be chosen to take their place.

Knowing that his own father despised him wasn’t so bad. Tobirama had a brother who loved him very much despite his demonic appearance and he considered himself lucky to have that much. By nature he wasn’t much of a social creature anyway so it hardly bothered him that most of the people in their small settlement treated him like an unwanted curse. He saw the way they would not consume any food he had touched, would not tread the ground he had passed over until it was blessed, refusing to look him in the eye or even pretending he wasn’t there at all. If they wanted to be stupid and superstitious then his time was better spent studying the books he so loved.

Having expected to die some time as early as his mid-teens, Tobirama could honestly say he felt rather blessed to have lived to his late twenties instead. Were he anyone else he would have been married with several children by now, settled down and trained in a prosperous trade, but that life had never appealed to him. Now he was to be food for a deity – or whatever it was the gods did with their sacrifices – and Tobirama regretted nothing beyond the sadness he had seen in his brother’s eyes that morning.

Only Hashirama would miss him now but his brother’s was the only pure heart in their village and although it would cause the older man pain he could not bring himself to wish that Hashirama had never loved him.

If only he weren’t so bloody hot. Sweat trickled down his temples, smearing the ceremonial makeup caked on to his skin in the hopes that the god would pay no attention to his defective form. Even more than the heat it was the itching which drove him to distraction, almost enough to make him forget the kernel of terror which had been sitting like burning lead in his gut for the past week, ever since it finally sank in that this was the year in which death would find him.

Funny, that. He’d always thought he was so used to the idea that fear would not touch him when the time came. Evidently he’d been wrong.

When a shadow fell across his face Tobirama’s first thought was to be relieved that the light was finally out of his eyes. He closed them gratefully and allowed the tension of squinting for so long to gradually slip away, enjoying the coolness of the shade, until it occurred to him that there should be nothing on this desolate plateau which was capable of casting a shadow. His eyes snapped back open at once to stare in muted horror at the beautiful but terrible creature stood before him.

Madara was of the Uchiha, the Gods of Fire, and he stood as the most powerful of them all. It was after him that the Land of Fire had been named and it was his protection which kept the settlement of Konohagakure from being swept away in the flames that raged through the forests every year.

Plumes of black smoke billowed around his temples and flowed down his back in the place of hair. Red coals burned where his eyes should be, each of them lined with deep black fissures in matching patterns which seemed to whirl in slow circles, hypnotizing the terrified human before him. Tobirama was unable to tear his gaze away from the impassive face looking down at him but in his peripheral vision he could tell that the god wasn’t wearing much. Somewhere in the back of his mind, where logic overrode fear, he supposed that if he were a god then clothes would probably seem a little superfluous to him too. 

As he had been prepared for sacrifice, their priests had coached him in to learning the ritual phrases he was meant to say at this moment. He couldn’t say them. There was no breath in his lungs and Tobirama had no idea if it was due to fear or awe but his entire body was left frozen in place at the mercy of this being – as had always been his fate.

While he sat and awaited his judgment like the insignificant creature he was, the god Madara shifted his weight and slowly began to move, pacing a circle around his prey. When he walked his feet made no disturbance on the earth but if Tobirama listened closely he could hear a sound like crackling fire, like the roar of flames which had burned for decades unending. His very gaze left heat where it landed on Tobirama’s body.

“That is not your skin.” His voice was the whisper of smoke. Tobirama swallowed thickly and lifted his chin, searching for his voice.

“Ceremonial paint, Oh Great One, so that I might be pleasing for you to look upon.”

“Hn. I don’t like it.”

Tobirama wasn’t sure how to respond to that but as it turned out he didn’t need it. Heat washed over his body with a casual wave of the god’s hand, causing the paint covering Tobirama’s skin and hair to wither in to ash, sloughing away to pile on the rocks beneath him. Immediately his eyes lowered, almost embarrassed to have a _god_ look upon him in such an assessing manner. Bearing the scorn of his fellow human beings was one thing when they were equally as flawed as he was, if usually in less visible ways, but it was the gods who had created man and Tobirama had never felt the weight of his own defectiveness so clearly.

He flinched again when warm fingers tucked themselves under his chin to lift it back up. The god Madara was gazing down at him with something like wonder on his flawless face.

“Such perfection I have never seen in the lesser races.”

“…what?”

“In all the millennia since I granted your people my protection, never have I been offered such a magnificent gift. Truly you are worthy of being companion to a god. It must have pained your people a great deal to part with you.”

“Me?” Tobirama couldn’t help it. Perhaps fear had left him in the state of bravery only achieved when one is driven close to madness by the danger at hand. He began to laugh. “They’ve been waiting to serve me up on a silver platter since I was born. Pained? They’re probably dancing in the streets to have me gone. I’m a _freak_.”

His chin jerked as the fingers under it slipped away and Madara reeled back, visibly stunned. “Explain yourself,” the god demanded.

Tobirama’s head fell in to a bowed position once more, looking down at the exposed white skin of his legs, bared by the ceremonial kilt they had dressed him in and so pale in the midday sun. Red eyes squinting with hysterical mirth, he did as he was commanded.

“What is there to explain? Just look at me. They call me a demon and ward their homes against me. My father is the village Head but he was the first one to suggest my name for sacrifice when there was no one else to be disposed of. Trust me, no one but my brother is _pained_ to have me gone.”

“They are wrong.”

“Go tell them that,” he huffed automatically, forgetting himself for a moment. In the next he remembered exactly who it was he had just sassed and winced.

“Perhaps I shall.”

His head snapped up so fast that his neck let out a painful crack but he hardly noticed. “I…what?”

Madara was already bending down and reaching out a hand.

“Show me your heart,” he breathed in a burning whisper.

The moment his fingers touched Tobirama’s forehead it was as though his brain was melting. Fire licked the inside of his skull, sound and color and sensation all crashing down upon him like a great wave of confusion that lasted an eternity in every second. It was endless even as it had barely begun. Unable to understand what was happening, he had no way of telling when it would end – or if it ever would.

Was this to be his new existence? Had he been judged as impure by the gods as easily as he had by humanity and sentenced to this unsettling, incomprehensible punishment?

It could have been hours or minutes or even a few mere seconds and Tobirama would not have been able to tell the difference but eventually it did end. Not a punishment after all, it seemed. Panting and shaking, he fluttered his eyes open to see the paramount fire god kneeling before him, the coal of his eyes burning passionately and the smoke of his hair rippling as though it were whipping in a non-existent wind.

“They will burn,” Madara promised him in a deadly quiet tone, his voice the deep roar of molten lava. Exhausted, Tobirama could only blink in confusion and let his body slump forward. Madara caught him in a surprisingly gentle embrace. “I will drown them in flame. I will raze their homes as I raze the forests. Let the chaff be made ash that something new and better may grow in their place.”

“My brother,” Tobirama managed a weak protest. He shuddered under the hand that stroked the back of his head, although it was far from a shudder of revulsion.

“Your memories have shown me that he is indeed a true soul. His is the only life I will spare.” Something warm traced around the shell of Tobirama’s ear and Madara’s voice was much closer when he continued. “And you I shall keep. I shall make you a deity in your own right and you shall stay by my side until time goes to rest.”

Although it probably should have worried him how easily he sank in to this being’s embrace, how quickly he gave himself over and trusted the fire god to watch over him as he slept, there was nothing but calm in him now. For a man who had been waiting to die for over a decade, being offered godhood instead was a pretty sweet deal. If said godhood happened to come hand in hand with an extremely attractive god-creature acting a little possessive of him, well, Tobirama certainly wasn’t going to complain about the implications to be found in that.

For now, however, he was still very human and his body would need to recover from having a deity rooting around inside his memories. It felt strange to fall asleep with a smile on his face and hope in his heart – but not bad.

Later he might awaken to find the settlement which had rejected him burned to a crisp but, really, who was he to question the will of the gods?


End file.
